


once mine

by chocolatebirdie



Series: endgame fix its [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Endgame Fix it, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, M/M, post-Avengers: Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 05:30:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18631792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatebirdie/pseuds/chocolatebirdie
Summary: Bucky is learning to get used to this; this new Steve who lived five years with half of the world and both of his best friends gone, who started a therapy group just to get out of his own head once in a while. He’s different, but not seventy-years-of-brainwashing different - and Bucky would still love Steve, even then.





	once mine

**Author's Note:**

> heeeey, it's me again. still haven't written my paper. it's due in two days. i swear i'll start it once i post this, i just couldn't think when i had all this steve dialogue in my head! so! here i am.
> 
> if you haven't read mansions of rest it'll still make sense, and if you read that one and decided you're not interested in any continuation then by all means, exit outta here. this probably isn't as good but... *shrug emoji* like i said. i couldn't think without getting it out.

“Why didn’t you stay?” Bucky asks later, when everyone has gone to wherever it is they now consider home, and it’s just Bucky and Steve, naked together in bed.

“I could never do that,” Steve murmurs.

They lay there quietly for a while, Bucky running a finger up and down Steve’s body, and he thinks if he was talented like Steve he’d’ve liked to draw him.

“When we went back to 1970, Tony met Howard,” Steve says. “He got to talk to him before he ever become a father. Before he screwed everything up for him.” Steve pauses and stares at the ceiling. “I saw her. Peggy. In 1970. Tough as ever, hard at work at SHIELD.” He smiles only slightly. “She was so beautiful.”

They lapse into another silence after that. Bucky is learning to get used to this; this new Steve who lived five years with half of the world and both of his best friends gone, who started a therapy group just to get out of his own head once in a while. He’s different, but not seventy-years-of-brainwashing different - and Bucky would still love Steve, even then.

“When I returned the stones,” Steve says slowly, “I went back to her. I just wanted to see. I had to, I…” He stops again, and Bucky takes his hand, running his thumb across the back. “Before I went into the ice I promised her a dance. When she died, I still owed it to her. I just. I wanted to give it,” he finishes quietly.

Bucky smiles up at him. “How was it?”

“Kind of terrible,” Steve laughs. “I’m not any better at dancing than I was when I was five feet tall. But she didn’t care.”

“Did she know?”

Steve smiles. “I wasn’t going to tell her anything... but she knew. After our song ended, she kissed my cheek, and told me to go. I asked her what she meant and she said, ‘don’t underestimate me, Steve.’” Steve’s voice lilts in a poor attempt at imitating the most incredible woman Bucky’s ever met. “‘You’re not meant to be here. Go home.’” Steve looks over at Bucky then. “I didn’t need telling twice. I didn’t even really need telling once.

“When we went back to 2012, I fought my old self, and he was… the most obnoxious son of a bitch.” He rolls his eyes. “I can see how Tony and I got off to such a rough start.”

Bucky wasn’t there, but he’s pretty sure Steve wasn’t the only one to blame back then. But he hasn’t felt comfortable talking about Tony since the funeral, so he stays quiet.

“And it just made me think – if I am so different from the person I was eleven years ago, how the hell could I ever fit into the forties again?”

Steve turns towards Bucky, connecting their hands that aren’t already entwined. “It took everything I had in me to go back in time and not break you out of Hydra. I couldn’t… I couldn’t stay in there one more minute without doing something, and probably majorly fucking up the universe in the process. And,” he squeezes Bucky’s hands, “I didn’t belong there. _There_ doesn’t have you, or Sam, or – or T’Challa.” Bucky’s pretty sure T’Challa wasn’t what Steve had originally intended to say, but he doesn’t comment on it. He hardly knew Natasha when his head was screwed on straight, but it’d take someone a lot dumber than him not to notice how close the two were.

“I still feel like the man out of time, sometimes, when I’m here,” Steve says eventually. “But now, after everything… we kind of all are.”

Bucky kisses Steve’s forehead and smiles, just a little. “So where do we go now, Steve?” 

Steve hooks a finger under Bucky’s chin and brings him to his lips, kissing him once, twice, three times, quick and slow all at once. “Wherever we want, Buck.”

**Author's Note:**

> what's a setting? i don't know her.
> 
> (in my mind it's wakanda tho)
> 
> [tumblr](http://kiwilesbian.tumblr.com); [twitter](http://twitter.com/kiwiiesbian)


End file.
